It means that for the Son of Man, the knowledge of good and evil are consumed together.
I like this point of view. Never thought about it this way. Thanks
Self sacrifice is not an act of poverty or weakness but an act of power…
True
…which brought about a global shift in religious thinking.
Self sacrifice was not something new for the world. May I remind you of Dionysus Zagreas that every Spring he was sacrificing himself for the good of the world and was then consumed by his believers -bread and wine for body and blood, hence the Holy Communion later in Christianity.
The world was just ready for a religious shift, that’s all. So, the same things where presented again in another way.
I think it was more of a “purification and revival” of the religions, as they where getting in a very materialistic and egocentric. It was an attempt to return to the roots and the basics. Hence the deep relation with much older religions.
Specifically the ideas in Gnostic Christianity understood Jesus not as a savior in the traditional sense, but rather embraced the idea that Jesus was an example born to lead all humans toward discovering their own hidden divinity. It followed very closely in the footsteps of the pagan mystery cults that were popular in Greece and Rome at the time of Jesus's birth (traditions that also taught that humans were part divine, and could learn to access that divinity during life and after death). Of course the Gnostics were mostly killed off as heretics by the Catholic church, but speculation based on Gnostic principles became the basis for stories like "The Da Vinci Code" and "Holy Blood, Holy Grail." The scholarship is pretty poor in those stories, but the ideas really seem to capture peoples imaginations.
Exactly
I've read some pretty convincing arguments that JC was probably familiar with pagan mysticism and intentionally incorporated its symbolism into his teachings. If this is true, he may have intended to create a religion that is more like ancient Gnosticism than modern Catholicism or Protestantism. Unfortunately there is too little solid information to do much more than speculate.
Yes, it’s true. And some of these arguments you can find in the Secret Mark Gospel and in the Acts of John, the part that is called “Hymn of Jesus” (Gnostic ones, of course).
In Secret Mark, the event with Lazarus is described differently, in a way that it seems that Lazarus was not dead to start with but rather paniced during an initiation.
In the “Hymn of Jesus”, who ever reads this part and has some knowledge of mysticism, s/he will recognize various older mystic ceremonies in it.
...I’m sorry that I don’t have time for more details now. I’ll get back on that subject with more, later
“Ben” is father, not son.
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